The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-05-28

people in those States, and their value
must be added to the savings bank de-
posits. These figures are not given to
show life in the mills as a roseate
! poem, but to prove the grave error of
the assertion quoted on the condition of
labor. Give us the plain truth, strike
where it may, but not such overweight
statements which truth will not sus-
tain.
Wages not Falling but Rising.
We are told ('Progress and Poverty"
p. 227): 'In the United States, aims
houses are increasing and wages are
decreasing" Let us test this assertion
by facts. BY the government census of
1860 the total of wages paid to 1,040,-
$40 men and 27O,997 women in manu-
factures was $378, 8,878, 1865, an average
per head of $3.50. In 1880 the like in
dustries employed 2,O25, 1886 men, $751;
639 women and 1Sl 1921 youths under II
years old-a total of 2,73S 1876, to whom
was paid $947 ,953 ,795, an average Of
$346 per head, an advance of 20 per
cent. in average wages in twenty years.
These averages include women and
youths, and make no allowance for
time and labor lost in the manufactc-
ries, and given and paid in other voca-
tions. They are, therefore, too low,
especially to show the wages Of men,
but this does not affect the striking
contrast between their increase and al
legged decrease.
In an address by Hon. w. d. Kelley,
M. Ca gentleman very careful and
accurate in fact as we'll as a master of
great principles-we are told 1.-The
years 1860 and 1861, and from 1857 to
the autumn Of the latter year Ia free
trade period) was one of the darkest
periods ever seen by the laboring peo-
pie of America, Not one out of five
skilled workmen of the country was
steadily employed. In Philadelphia the
builders Of street railroad advertised
for 250 hands at fifty cents a day, and
over 5 900 applied, "a majority skilled arti-
sans out of work. A rolling mill, to save
its skilled wOrkmen from open pauper-
ism, built turnpike, and their expert
hands broke stone on it for fifty cents a
day rather than become paupers, and
many could not be employed even in
these ways"
If we would go back a half century,
in New England, an extract from a
speech at Great Falls, New Hampshire,
Feb. 81, 1872, by Henry Wilson, U. S.
S., gives an interesting glimpse of the
early struggle of an eminent self. made
American citizen, and of 'the good old
times" as compared to our own. Sem
ator Wilson said:
"Ihe first month [ worked after was
| twenty one years of age, went into the
woods, drove team, cut mlll-logs and wood,
rose before day and worked hard until
after dark at night, and received for it
the magnificent sum of six dollars. Each
of those dollars looked as large to me
as the moon looked tonight.
"On that farm have seen the best men
who ever put scythe to grass, working for
from fifty to seventy-five cents day, in
the longest days of Summer. Yesterday
[ visited that old farm. l asked the men
| there what they we're paid in last Sum
mer's haying time, and they said from
two to two and half dollars day. This
was paid on the same ground where men
| worked forty years ago for fifty cents,
/ and took their pay in farm products, not
money. [ have seen some of the bright
est women go into farm houses and work
for from fifty to seventy five cents a week,
milking, making butter and cheese, wash
ing, spinning and weaving, all
kinds OF housework. | was told yester-
day that many young women we're earn
ing a dollar day in the shops, and that
from two and half to three and a half
dollars a week with board) was paid to
such as would do housework."
A volume could be filled with like
facts. This wild statement that wages
are decreasing can only lead the igno-
rant into error. AS to the alleged in
crease of almshOuses no facts are given,
for the very good reason that there are
none to give,-no statistics covering
the wide land in any complete way can
be had. The average duration of hui
man life shows whether mans condi-
tion falls or rises. Statistics are few
and imperfect, but facts show better
average health and longer life, signs Of
a higher condition. OF 500 graduates
from Yale College, in New Haven,
Conn, in the last century, 154 lived fif-
ty years or more after graduating;
while of the same number graduating
in this century, 100 lived fifty or more
years afterward.
A man possessed and absorbed by
false theory, sees with intense, but mar
row gaze; forms his assumptions first
and then shapes his assertions to up
hold them; gives such facts as come
within the limited scope of his vision
or help his side of the case, but ignores
all others. Self-deluded, seeing all
things through a distorting and confu-
ing glamour, he deludes others.
1t is the common conviction OF Chris